For the purpose of this specification, it will be understood that a wide variety of foods may be cooked in a toaster. Such foods include breads such as wholemeal breads, bagels, pastries, conventional sliced breads as well as frozen versions of all of the aforesaid examples. Throughout the specification, the term “food” will be used to designate all of these unless otherwise specified. Use will also be made of the term “toasting cycle”. A toasting cycle is a process that begins with the presence of food in the toasting cavity and ends with the extinguishing of the heating elements and ejection of the food in those toasters that act to eject the food (some toasters do not eject the food). The term “toasting cycle” may also refer to defrosting. The use of the term “toasting cycle” is made without reference to the initial temperature of the toaster or the toasting cavity. The phrase “supplemental cycle” refers to both the lengthening of a toasting cycle or a second new cycle that supplements a first or initial cycle.
Reference will be made throughout the specification to the word “shade”. For the purpose of the examples provided in the specification, the range of toasting times is divided into five “shades”. The lowest degree of toasting or browning is referred to as “shade 1”. The longest duration toasting and thus the most brown is designated as “shade 5”. The display of a toaster may only indicate, say, five basic intended shades, but additional shades for a given food may be available when a user positions a sliding adjustment lever, mechanism or adjustment knob to a position between any two of the five basic shades.
It will be appreciated that the teachings of the present invention, apart from the specific methods of electromechanically implementing them are equally applicable to both manual and motorised toasters.
It is sometimes the case that a toasting cycle results in a toasted food that is, to the taste of the user, undercooked. In such circumstances, a user will typically leave the food in the toaster, initiate another toasting cycle and then manually interrupt that cycle in order that the food not be burnt. However, if the user forgets or becomes distracted the already toasted food will go through a second full cycle and may burn.
Toasters are known to have a reheat cycle. The purpose of a reheat cycle is to bring food that has gone cold in the toaster to a temperature approximating the temperature that is normally achieved at the end of a normal toasting cycle. The purpose of a reheat cycle is to increase the temperature of the food but not to change the shade or amounts of brownness on the surface of the food. It is also known to provide a toaster with a timer that measures the amount of time since the completion of a full toasting cycle. A subsequent toasting cycle may be shortened in accordance with that measurement to account for heat in the cavity when the cycle starts.